Overall, he suggests that the papyrus was forged from a copy of the ancient Gospel of Thomas text, discovered less than a century ago in Egypt. One report in the journal, by epigrapher Leo Depuydt of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, claims grammatical errors dog the text and concludes, "The author of this analysis has not the slightest doubt that the document is a forgery, and not a very good one at that." Instead, they remove previously raised objections to the text, finding no evidence of it being a fake. But similarities to other papyrus gospel texts from the centuries after Christ point to the long-running debate on the role of women in churches.Īnd the results do not conclusively prove the papyrus isn't a very clever forgery, caution the scientists. The new results say nothing about whether the historical Jesus indeed had a wife, King notes. "As historians, the question then becomes, what does it mean?" "All of the evidence points to it being ancient," King said in a telephone briefing. King suggests it is a copy of an earlier text. They conclude that the fragment's ink is consistent with ancient inks and that its papyrus fibers date from the seventh to eighth centuries.
Ancient papyrus for sale series#
But in the series of reports released by the Harvard Theological Review, various experts report analyses of the chemistry and ancient handwriting of the fragment. The claim also attracted skepticism from religious scholars, who saw the fragment as a likely forgery. Initially dated by King to the fourth century, the message from the past resonated with ongoing debates about the role of women in Christianity, as well as echoing themes from Dan Brown's popular thriller, The Da Vinci Code. " are written on the center of the fragment. (Related: " Jesus May Have Had a Wife, Ancient Text Suggests.")
Did Jesus have a wife? A controversial papyrus scrap making that suggestion dates to the eighth century A.D., assert a series of just-released scientific reports, which may point to earlier Christian beliefs.Īnnounced at a 2012 conference in Rome by the Harvard Divinity School's Karen King, the " Gospel of Jesus's Wife"-a scrap of papyrus with Coptic writing-contained some intriguing lines.
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